Beginner Baking 101 with SusieJ

So you've decided to bake, but you don't know where to
start. Or, you are already baking, but you still feel a bit lost. If you
feel like you know what you are doing, go on to part 2
. To start baking, to see if you like it, you don't need many things, and they aren't expensive things. I hate, I loathe the articles and catalogues that list basic kitchen supplies and include stand mixers and $100 electronic instant-read thermometers. Let me tell you, unless you approach your kitchen appliances like a newborn baby, you will break the $100 thermometer. You will leave it near a sink of water or a boiling pot of water or some water feature in your kitchen. And this will kill the $100 instant-read thermometer dead. Then you will keep baking without a thermometer, wondering why you needed it to bake. Or you will by the $10 mechanical thermometer, which comes in more colors to match your decor, and won't make you feel guilty when it gets too cozy with the water can. What follows is a list of the very few ingredients, equipment and techniques absolutely necessary to bake.

Ingredients

Six ingredients are used for most baking: flour, sugar, baking
powder, vanilla, butter, and eggs.
Not all recipes use all ingredients, many recipes need additional
ingredients, some recipes use none of the above, but if you have these
on hand you can bake many things, and often need to buy only a couple of
additional ingredients for a recipe. All should be available at any
grocery store.

Flour

Should be all-purpose. Some people care about bleached
vs. unbleached, but I don't. There are other kinds of wheat flour:
pastry, cake, bread, self-rising, whole wheat; and other grains: rye,
spelt, corn meal, and a host of other things humans have put between two
grindstones over the millenia. All-purpose is used in most if not
all basic recipes. Should last for a while. Brand generally doesn't
matter.

Sugar

Should be cane or beet sugar, white, and is sold in four- or
five-pound bags. There's also 4x or caster sugar (actually an acceptable
substitute, and often used in cocktails), powdered or 10x sugar (for
icing), brown (light or dark), and demerra. There are other sweeteners,
like honey, agave nectar, corn syrup (light or dark), molasses,
artificial sweeteners. Just get the stuff you'd put in a sugar bowl (but
not artificial). Sugar should last for a year or more. Brand generally
doesn't matter.

Baking powder

Is the most-used leavener (thing that makes baked goods rise) in
baking unless you are baking yeast breads. Buying baking powder was my
commitment to baking. Before that, I'd always had a box of Bisquick in
the house, but buying a whole can of baking powder meant I could bake
pancakes, cookies, cornbread, and cakes whenever I wanted.
Baking powder combines an acid and a base that don't react to each other
until they they are wet and/or heated. Double-activing baking powders
When the two chemicals react, they turn into water (very little) and
carbon dioxide gas, helping the batter or dough puff up. In general,
recipes use 1 to 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder per cup of flour. Not all
do; red velvet cake recipes use much less to get that dense texture. I
use double-acting Clabber Girl and Calumet, and avoid Rumford, which is
not double-acting. Baking powder should last six months to a
year after opening.

Butter

Available by the pound or half-pound, or sometimes even in single
sticks. One stick is one-half cup is one-quarter pound, or one pound is
two cups is four sticks. When you start baking, salted or unsalted
doesn't matter much. Recipes generally call for unsalted butter so that
you can control how much salt goes in, but using salted butter won't
make anything inedibly salty. Lasts for a month or more in the
refrigerator; the biggest problem is it picking up the tast of other
foods in the fridge. Can be frozen, just remember to defrost the night
before (or become adept at defrosting in the microwave).

Eggs

Most American recipes assume large eggs, which weigh about 57 grams
including the shell, or 50 grams without the shell. Whether you can
substitute other sizes of eggs depends on the number of eggs and the
ratio of eggs to other ingredients. If the recipe calls for many eggs
(say a half dozen or more), then add an extra medium or small egg, and
use one less large or jumbo egg. The Wikepedia entry on
chicken eggs can help you with the conversion, or you could skip the
math and buy large eggs.

Vanilla extract

Vanilla is not the boring option in baking. It is, instead, the
subtle oomph in the background. I personally prefer real extract, but,
at nearly $80/quart (Penzey's Mexican vanilla sells for nearly $40/16
oz), you have my permission to buy the artificial stuff. The testers at
Cook's Illustrated magazine couldn't tell the difference in the finished
product.

Cinnamon

The spice most often used in baking, it is sold in small and large
jars, and enourmous bottles in discount stores. Until you know you love
baking, the large jar from the grocery store should be sufficient. The
advice is to replace your spices every year, but the only people likely
to do this are those who use their spices in a year. You could just buy
the small jar and throw it out whatever is left after three years.

Equipment

Below are the absolute basic equipment every baker must have. Note
how short a list it is! Stay away from the high-end, national equipment
chains because they are supplying trophy kitchens. When you start
baking, you need only a few items — measuring cups, spoons, mixing
bowls, a mixer, a scraper, and pans.

Measuring cups

One set of cups in 1/4,
1/3, 1/2 and 1 cup measures
for dry ingredients, and a pyrex 1- or 2-cup measure for liquids. Odd
sizes like 1/8, 2/3 and
3/4 cup can sometimes be found. I like my Oxo
cups; they are sturdy and have easy-to-read measurements.

Measuring spoons

One set of spoons in 1/4,
1/2 and 1 teaspoon (tsp or t), and 1 tablespoon
(Tbs or T). Some sets also have odd sizes like 1/8
teaspoon and 1/2 tablespoon. Three teaspoons are
one tablespoon, so 1 1/2 teaspoons are
1/2 tablespoon. The Oxo measuring spoons have the
same virtues as their measuring cups: sturdy and easy to read. However,
the round bowls don't fit into some spice jars, and narrow spoons work
better.

Bowls

They're not just for mixing any more! In addition to a three-quart
bowl and two-quart bowl for mixing, smaller bowls for holding
pre-measured ingredients, cracking eggs, holding cookie decorations. As
lovely as a graduated set of nesting mixing bowls from
1/4 cup to 4 quarts is, cereal bowls and coffee
cups (not mugs) do just as well.

Mixer

Technically, you could do it the way your great-grandmother did,
and beat everything by hand. This could be as simple as an egg-beater
from the hardware store, which is capable of creaming butter and
whipping egg whites. The Oxo brand has a nice, smooth action. More
likely, you'll pick up a three- or five-speed hand mixer, which is even
better at creaming and whipping. A hand mixer is not powerful enough for
bread dough, and some cookie doughs need to be finished with hand
folding.

Spatula/scraper

While not necessary, a silicone spatula mixes, folds, beats and
gets the last bits of pancake batter onto the griddle. There are
mini-srapers and large spoon-ulas, but starting out, a mid-sized
spatula gives the most bang for the buck. Silicone lasts longer than
rubber, and can be used on hot pans without making a gooey mess.

Pans

It all depends on what you want to bake. In
general, your pans should be shiny (because dark colors absorb more heat
and lead to burning) and heavy weight (to transfer heat more easily).
Pyrex is a bad choice except for a pie plate (nine to ten inches),
because the food will burn too easily. Insulated cookie sheets were the
hot thing a decade ago, but bakers have cooled in their appreciation of
late. If you have two of anything (two cake pans, two cookie sheets)
they should be identical, so that baking times are identical. Some
things are most useful in twos: cake pans (nine inch diameter is a good,
generic size), cookie sheets, muffin/cupcake tins, small loaf pans.

Timer

I almost forgot to include a timer in this list, which is
fitting considering how often I forget to set the timer. A clock works,
but doesn't grab your attention when you get sucked into blogs. The
timer on a cell phone or computer works, but it's much cheaper to
replace a plastic timer than a cell phone.

After that ...

Buy items that you need and will use. Buy a rolling pin and cookie
cutters if you like sugar cookies.

Skills

Prepare

The value of preparation was driven home the night I was stir-frying
with hot peppers, and thought I had time to mince the garlic and get it
into the pot before the pepper burned. The pepper burned and the smoke
drove me from the kitchen. That smoke lingered all night, even
with the windows and doors open and the fan running. To be fancy, call
your preparation mise en place (said with a Philadelphia-French
accent: meez ahn plass).

Get out all the ingredients before you start — even before you
start measuring. Get the flour, sugar and eggs out; you'll see if you
are short a couple eggs and can run to grocery store immediately.
Measure out the other ingredients, putting each measured ingredient into
its own bowl: this can be a soup bowl, a tea cup, or a little dessert
bowl. Now you find out if that really was two cups of flour left in the
bag.

In a nice, clear, clean counter space arrange the ingredients in the order
they'll are used in the recipe.

If any of the ingredients have preparation methods, like chopping or
melting and cooling, do that before starting on the other
directions.

Measure

The first skill you need to master is how to measure, because baking
is really applied chemsitry, and if the ratios get too far out of
whack, disaster awaits. (The good news is, if everything is consistent,
you should get the same result. The bad news is you can't just throw
everything together and hope it comes out.) Most cookbooks and recipes
in America today use "dip and sweep" for dry ingredients: dip the
measuring cup or spoon into the bag, bring out far more than you'll
need, and sweep off the excess back into the bag with the back of a
knife or the side of a fork or spoon handle. Don't press it down! If the
flour or sugar goe everywhere but the bag when you sweep, sweep onto a
piece of wax paper or tin foil, or into a large enough bown, and pour
the excess into the bag.

For liquids, pour into the glass measuring cup, bend down and check
the with your eye level with the measuring line. Looking at it from
above is innacurate because refraction keeps your eye from accurately
seeing where the liquid is in relation to the line.

Mix

In the easiest recipes, such as Jewish Apple Cake or Pumpkin Bread,
you only need to mix the dry ingredients (flour, seasonings, baking
powder, salt, maybe sugar) in one large bowl, mix the wet ingredients
(eggs, water, milk, oil, melted butter, maybe sugar) in another bowl,
and then mix the wet into the dry. Professionals call this the muffin
method, because this is how most muffins are made.

When you mix, be sure the bowl is big enough to keep batter from
flying everywhere. With an electric mixer, start on a low speed and then
go faster to prevent flying batter. Use a spatuala/scraper to get
everything off the bottom and into the batter. The recipe will probably
say whether the batter should be smooth (no lumps) or if it can be
lumpy.

Oven

Most American home ovens are conventional, and not convection ovens.
Convection means the air inside the oven is blown around; this transfers
heat more efficiently to the food. Most American recipes are written for
conventional ovens.

Before baking, you need to pre-heat the oven. Some ovens have a
preheat setting which can heat the oven faster, but you must remember to
re-set the oven to bake, or things will burn. The other way is to turn
the oven to the bake setting and let it heat for 20 minutes. In most
recpies (mine included), the oven should have more than enough time to
heat up if it starts pre-heating when the directions say to pre-heat.
And if you forget to pre-heat until mid-recipe, you should still have
enough time

The biggest and most expensive baking tool in your kitchen, and
possibly the most fickle. It can run cold, or hot, or take forever to
heat up, or have hot spots. Pop an oven thermometer in while preheating
and check to see if the temperature matches. If it's off by 20 degrees
or more, adjust the temperature. And keep checking. The bread test can show
if you have any hot spots. If the spots are particularly bad, you can
avoid them, or rotate your pans. If the oven has temperature problems
and needs a good cleaning, that good cleaning will probably help it
regulate temperature better. Oven walls are shiny to reflect heat; oven
crud is dark and absorbs it.

Cream

The technique, not the ingredient.

Although, yum.

Creaming is beating butter (or margarine or shortening) until light
and fluffy, often with sugar. This puts air bubbles into the fat, and it
is mainly the air bubbles in the butter that will make your cake rise,
according to all the cookbook authors. The baking powder reaction makes
the bubbles in the fat bigger; the powder works best with existing
bubbles. It's the basis of many cakes and cookies, including Choclate almond cherry cake, sour-cream cut-outs,
allkinds of spritz

First thing to do is to bring the butter to cool room temperature.
For creaming, butter can be a little cooler than what most of us would
consider room temperature, about 65 degrees. Butter from the refrigerator
needs about
30 to 45 minutes to reach this temperature. In the summer, be careful
not to over-soften.

Second, drop the butter into a large bowl and start beating on low
speed. When the butter is smeared nicely around the bowl, increase the
mixer speed to medium, and continue beating until the butter begins to
look fluffy. Add the sugar, and, once the sugar is incorparated into the butter,
increase the speed again. Keep beating sugar and butter mixture until
it's very fluffy, about two to three minutes with a stand mixer, longer
with a hand-held mixer, longer yet with an eggbeater.

Creaming is also a way of mixing batter ingredients
together. The general method is to cream the butter and sugar, beat in
the eggs, then mix in dry and liquid ingredients.

After creaming the butter, in most recipes you will beat in the eggs,
then add the dry ingredients alternating with the liquid ingredients.
If the recipe says to add the eggs into the creamed butter, add the eggs
one at a time, beating for half a minute after each addition. After
adding the last egg, scrape the butter up from the bottom of the bowl
before beating the egg in. This makes sure all the butter has mixed
with the eggs.

Finally, mix together the dry ingredients in one bowl, and the liquid
in another. Add some (usually 1/2 or 1/3, according to the recipe) of
the dry ingredients and mix on low speed just until mixed in. Add some
of the liquid ingredients, again mixing on low speed just until mixed
in, and keep alternating, ending with the dry ingredients. Scrape the
all the butter and batter from the bottom of the bowl, and mix on low or
medium speed until the batter is smooth. Of course, if the recipe's
directions for adding ingredients differ

Practice, practice, practice

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.

How do you become a good baker? Practice, practice, practice. At least
with baking, you can eat the results, the failures, too.

My friend Cecily recently
posted a photo of her first crafting
effort along with a snarky comment that this was why she doesn't craft
("anti-craft," I think she called herself). I thought it looked pretty good;
I couldn't have done better. The problem is that Cecily is a good writer,
and expects to be equally good at most creative things. Well, she's been
reading since before kindergarten, and probably writing since not long
after. She has practiced writing for more than three decades. Of course
she's good! But she's only made one gingerbread train in her life.

You can't succeed without trying, and without trying again, and again,
and again. There will be failures. Oh, will there
be failures in the kitchen. But if you can figure out what went wrong,
you get to call a failure a learning experience, which sounds nicer.

Reading books and watching cooking shows can teach a lot, but they only
go halfway. It's practice that perfects. The more you bake, the more you
know about how it should work. Should the dough be this wet? Was it this wet
the last time? How difficult was it to handle? How did it bake up?

Baking a recipe the second time is always easier than the first, just as
driving an unfamiliar route is easier the second time. Even without the
details, you have a general idea, and you know what gave you problems and
can prepare for it. The tenth time is even easier, and eventually, you've
memorized the recipe.

I can whip out a batch of scones or cream biscuits in under half an hour
for weekend breakfasts because I have baked scones or biscuits nearly every
weekend for years. Sometimes the biscuits don't rise, or they taste soapy
the next day (too much baking powder). Burned cupcakes tell me to dump the
muffin pan with the black bottom.

Bake things you like to eat, things you won't mind eating over and over,
especially things you would like to eat if they aren't perfect. Start simple
and work your way up to wedding cakes. Or just jump into wedding cakes, but
bake a lot of them.

Books

All Cakes Considered

This book by Melissa Gray is
perfect for the beginning cake baker. Her first chapter is devoted to
expanding and explaining one of those back-of-a-notecard recipes
experienced bakers give out. Gray's inspiration for the book was a
failed attempt at Martha Washington Cake and a year-long project to
teach herself the skill to bake it. The book roughly follows the cakes
she added to her repertoire to build her skills.

Gray starts with a simple sour-cream pound cake, covers the Bundt
genre well, and moves on to gooey layer cakes. She makes a brief detour
into cookies and fried pies to give everyone a break from cake, cake,
cake. Then it's back to modern, involved cake creations.

Although she didn't intend it to be, All Cakes Considered is a
thorough survey of post-war American baking. It was the book I give to
German friends and family interested in baking.

Baking: From My House to Yours

By Dorie Greenspan. This is my pick for "if you only had one book in
your kitchen ..." Recipes are detailed and unambiguous; most are
accompanied by a photo so that you know if your result is as intended.
The focus is American and she covers everything but bread baking, with
an entire chapter devoted to apple pie.

Artisanal Bread in Five Minutes a Day

This book, by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François, covers the
bread gap left by Gray and Greenspan. As much as I resisted the no-kead
bread phenomena, it really does produce a fantastic loaf. The five
minutes refers to the active time of mixing up the dough and shaping the
loaf. In between, there are the usual couple hours of rise, followed by
roughly another hour and a half pre-heating and baking.

I modified the directions a bit by baking in an enameled, cast-iron
dutch oven, rather than using a baking stone and steam bath. Preheat the
dutch oven with the oven, and bake the loaf covered for the first half
of the baking time.

TV shows

I'm a bit curmudgeonly about television. Most shows are too much like
chips — I watch TV (and eat chips) because that's what's there,
not because it's interesting or yummy. "Yummy" food programming is, for
me, only about learning how to cook, no reality, not "games," just
people teaching how to cook well. (Iron Chef is the bad Chinese
dumplings of food programming; I rather like it in spite of myself, but
too much is off-putting.)

There are only a few people whose shows are in-depth enough to really
teach a novice how to bake. Most TV chefs cook a three-course meal in
half an hour, something possible only with trained staff or prepared
ingredients.

Sara Moulton

On the other hand, I have a world of respect for anyone who would
cook a meal in an hour of live television, incuding all the chopping and
measuring that takes most of the time. Food TV jettisoned Cooking Live
with Sara Moulton, but you can still find her on public TV, although no
longer cooking live.

Julia Child

In The French Chef, she did most, if not all, of the prep work
on-camera because she focused on one dish at a time. She would
demonstrate how to chop the vegetables and describe a
heretofore-unheard-of ingredient. When it was time to saute the
vegetables, rather than pulling out a pan of pre-sauteed vegetables, she
would saute and discuss the history of the dish, variations or pitfalls.
Her earliest shows are available on DVD.

Alton Brown

Is another chef who goes in-depth into a single dish in one program.
He devotes one episode to chocolate chip cookies, showing how varying
the ingredients changes the texture of the cookie to crisp or chewy or
puffy. He slips science and culinary history into the program under
goofiness. Early episodes of Good Eats are also available on DVD and
he's one of the last trained chefs on Food TV.